Materialist Dialectics

Marxist dialectics, the scientific world outlook and methodology which unifies materialism and dialectics. Revealing the universal laws of the motion and development of nature, society and human thinking, materialist dialectics is the science of interconnection and development.

Materialist dialectics is the scientific theory and method of thinking in constant development with practice founded by Marx and Engels. Marx’s Capital is a perfect specimen application of materialist dialectics. In Anti-Dühring, Dialectics of Nature, and other works Engels gave a fairly systematic account of materialist dialectics. Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks has also elucidated an abundant idea of dialectics. Lenin pointed out that dialectics can be briefly defined as the doctrine of the unity of the opposites, which constitutes the core of dialectics. Mao Zedong has grasped this core, made a systematical elaboration of the law of the unity of opposites in his On Contradiction, and applied materialist dialectics to each aspect of Chinese revolution and construction. Materialist dialectics holds that the world is universally interconnected and in an eternal development, and advocates the point of view of interconnection and development to know and change the world. Engels pointed out that the laws of dialectics are abstracted from the history of nature and human society. He resolved the laws of dialectics into three major laws: the law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa, the law of the interpenetration of opposites, and the law of the negation of the negation. As the core of materialist dialectics, the law of the unity of opposites reveals that contradiction is the source and the driving force of development of things, that contradiction has both universal and particular nature, and between the two aspects of the contradiction inherent in a thing there is at once unity and struggle, thus pushing forward the motion and change of a thing. The method of contradiction analysis is the most fundamental method to know and change the world. The law of the transmutation between quality and quantity reveals the basic form of change and development of things from the unity of opposites of quality and quantity, qualitative change and quantitative change, pointing out that the development of things is the process of change from quantitative accumulation to qualitative leap, from old quality to new quality. The law of the negation of negation revealed the process and trend of the contradictory motion of things from the unity of opposites of affirmation and negation, and explained the spiral-like process of development of things. These three laws of materialist dialectics constitute an organic logical system. A series of basic categories of materialist dialectics, such as content and form, essence and phenomenon, cause and effect, necessity and chance, possibility and reality, reveal the contradictory relation contained in a thing itself from different aspects.

Materialist dialectics has a revolutionary and critical nature, it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up. Marx said: “Dialectics regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it and is in its essence critical and revolutionary”. Materialist dialectics provides a scientific theoretical tool to apply dialectical thinking for knowing and reshaping the world.